Dr. Kristin Baldwin is an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Baldwin’s research harnesses cutting-edge stem cell technology and cloning.

Amy Chase Gulden is a visual artist interested in art-making processes that are collaborative, not fully under her control, and bring her into direct contact with the living world. She has been collaborating with molecular biologist Kristin Baldwin, using the microorganism, E. coli bacteria, to generate living, growing paintings that can be replicated indefinitely or immortalized by printing onto paper.

Hazel A. Barton has explored caves on five continents, studying microorganisms to research cures for antibiotic-resistant diseases. She coordinates an active undergraduate research laboratory, including a National Institutes of Health funded study examining microbial responses to starvation and a National Science Foundation funded project examining the energetic interactions of bacteria in cave environments.

Jesse Flores, a senior at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, first developed a love for science when he picked up The Anatomy of the Human Body. He’s since worked with lasers and with the bacteria staphylococcus, and is currently researching weather tracking systems. He can often be found playing handball or embarking on culinary and scenic adventures around town.

Anna Kuchment edits the Advances news section of Scientific American magazine. Before coming to SciAm, Kuchment was a writer and editor at Newsweek International and Newsweek magazines.

Peter Staley has been a long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, first as a member of ACT UP New York, then as the founding director of TAG, the Treatment Action Group. He served on the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) for 13 years.

Rachel Dutton, Ph.D. is a Bauer fellow at the Harvard University Center for Systems Biology. After receiving her Ph.D. in microbiology from Harvard Medical School, she founded her own lab with the mission of using cheese as a way to understand microbial ecosystems.

Jessica Joyner works at CUNY Brooklyn College exploring the microbiome of our daily, urban environment. Dr. Joyner’s research is centered on the microscopic life in the coastal waters and looking for specific bacteria that indicate pollution.

Martin Blaser is the Singer Professor of Medicine, Professor of Microbiology, and Director of the Human Microbiome Program at NYU School of Medicine. He served as Chair, Department of Medicine from 2000-2012. A physician and microbiologist, Dr. Blaser studies the relationships we have with our persistently colonizing bacteria.

As an internationally renowned professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at U.C. Berkeley, Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues rocked the research world in 2012 by describing a simple way of editing the DNA of any organism using an RNA-guided protein found in bacteria.